


Goodbye Captain

by VWebb



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Dimension Travel, Gen, Incursions (Marvel), Marvel 616 References, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Monologue, Not Steve Friendly, One Shot, Salty, Sort-of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VWebb/pseuds/VWebb
Summary: The Incursions are over and they finally found Tony Stark's last lab.  Now if they could just find Tony Stark.





	Goodbye Captain

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in a universe somewhere between the Marvel 616 after the Incursions are over and the MCU. It's basically just a scene that was meant to be part of an entire epic story. Other than a few chapters, that never happened. I did, however, write this scene that I was very happy with. You might say it was the inspiration of everything.
> 
> This isn't quite 616, where the Registration law was virtual slavery - I still don't agree with Roger's reaction, he didn't actually change anyone's mind and he wouldn't have won without becoming a martyr. I like to live in Reality-land. And Iron Man, Tony Stark, had a support system and didn't go off the rails from stress and have a psychotic break, so his reactions were a little more measured. So half way between 616 and MCU, because I have no good things to say about MCU Rogers' side. At least 616 had good motives even if he went about it stupidly.
> 
> So here you go.

“Hello, Steve.”

 

Steve Rogers looked up in surprise at the voice.  The rest of his team around him also looked up from where they were finishing forcing the doors to the dark lab open.

 

A blue hologram flicked in the center of the room.  The lab’s lights came up slowly, with obvious flickers as power came back to the room.  “I see you finally found my last lab.”

 

“Tony, where are you?”  Steve’s voice was harsh as he stared at what he thought was a transmission of the in-hiding Iron Man.

 

The hologram talked over top of Captain America, “I have to warn you this is just a recording.  I’m not hiding out around here or transmitting this to you from somewhere else. I can’t answer questions or explain anything.  This is _just_ a recording.”

 

Here there was a little pause as the Tony Stark recording continued to stare into the space in front of him.  “I was just going to leave, but my therapists and family convinced me that I needed to tell you what I did.  And at the same time finally say my peace and get a little closure.”

 

“Sure, it’s not fair to you.  As you will have no way to talk back, but frankly, Steve, I’m done being fair to you.”

 

Steve looked like he had been slapped as he stared at the hologram. The team members behind him muttered darkly about what Tony could possibly have to say.

 

“I’m going to have to go pretty far back for you to understand what’s going on now.  Sure, I could just give you the bare facts and let you figure out the rest, but there are actually some people that I do want to explain myself to.”

 

“We were teammates for a long time.  Things that happened changed me as a person.”

  
“I’m going to just put it right out there and start at the beginning.  Well, maybe not the beginning, beginning.  But the beginning of the end, at least.” 

 

“Steve do you remember when you came back after Agent 13 shot you and I had no memories.  Everyone was blaming me for your death.  The ‘civil war’ (what a ridiculous name) was MY fault and I had ‘betrayed’ you.”

 

The Tony Stark hologram shifted, “well, I have all my memories back.”

 

Steve took a step forward to stand directly in front of the hologram where it was facing the space over one of the metal work tables.

 

“Why is it, Steve, that I was the one that ‘betrayed’”, Tony gave little finger wiggles at that, “you?  Why didn’t anyone think that you were the one who betrayed me?”

 

“It was a crap, law.  I told you at the time it was a crap law, but I think you were already so up on your high horse getting self-righteous and indignant, that you probably didn’t even here that part.”

 

“You know what you do when they make a crap law, Steve?  You hire a lawyer and you take them to court.  I was a fucking billionaire, before you had even learned about it, I already had entire law firms on retainer ready to tear that law apart into something we could work with.”

 

“But, oh no!  Not Steve Rogers!  That’s politics and Steve Rogers is too good for the dirty dealing and dishonesty of _politics_.  A clean, straightforward fist fight is Steve Roger’s way.  You went off the rails and started attacking government agents, and there went the superhero moral authority.  It might make you uncomfortable, and you might try to say, ‘I’m just a guy from Brooklyn, but the world, or at least the country, looks at you as the moral center of the supers.  If you don’t want to be that, then stop calling yourself Captain America. Stop putting yourself out there as a representative of the US!  If the propaganda makes you uncomfortable, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”

 

“James Rhodes is ‘just a guy from South Philly’!  But I have never heard him use such a trite phrase to try to get out of responsibility for his actions and how they were perceived by the public.  Carol Danvers has never said ‘I’m just a woman!’  None of the X-Men have ever said, ‘I’m just a mutant!’”

 

“You use that phase to remind everyone that you used to be a sickly kid. Well, news flash Captain, or Commander, or whatever you’re calling yourself now, but you haven’t been a sickly kid in a _long_ time.”  By this time the Tony who had been making the recording was very obviously agitated.  He kept making aborted gestures with his hands before pushing them back down by his sides.

 

“Okay…  Alright…” The holographic Tony took a deep breath. “Okay.  So, I think you have a very big problem accepting responsibility for your actions and the consequences of them, Steve.  You’re perfectly willing to accept the praise and adulation, the deference when it comes to moral issues.  But if things go wrong, suddenly ‘that wasn’t my intention, I didn’t mean it that way,’ and of course, my absolute _favorite_ ‘I’m just a little guy from Brooklyn.’  As if any of those excuses matter when people died.”

 

“You know what, Steve, I don’t care about your intentions when people died.  And neither does the rest of the world.  Have you ever paid any sort of attention to your reputation outside of the United States?”

 

“It was a crap law, Steve.”  Those watching were startled at the abrupt change in topic, “I told you I wanted to work within the system to make it better.  In what way does that sound like 100% support?”

 

“I hated most of the people making that law!  No, I didn’t want to work with them.  No, I didn’t think this was the best law ever penned.  No, I didn’t think it was going to easy.  But, YES, I DID have a plan!”  The Tony in the recording hit his fist on the table in front of him.  It looked like the very table Steve was standing in front of right now.

 

Steve groped behind him until he found a dust covered chair to wheel, squeaking over to the desk the holographic Tony was standing in front of.

 

“The very second you attacked government agents that were just doing their job, no matter how much you didn’t agree with that job, I lost three quarters of my argument!”

 

“Captain America, our _leader_ was so contemptuous of the government that he felt no qualms at attacking agents in the course of their duty!  Captain America, who had the highest morals of any of the Avengers or any other Superhero had no problem killing civilians and police officers when he felt slighted.  Captain America, the pinnacle of American democracy, thought the best way to fight a law wasn’t through the American courts, a pillar of that democracy, but by ‘might makes right.’  Captain America was going to hit people until they stopped disagreeing with him.”

 

“You killed my court case before it could even get started.  Before your little rampage I estimated an 89% chance of winning on almost all fronts.  It was a crap law and it was terribly written.  All sorts of things could be taken out of context and used against anyone the government wanted it too.  I would have won.”

 

“I estimated less than 20% success after your violent rebellion. And even then, it would all depend on whether I could get you to come in peacefully.  It was a non-starter without that.”

 

“So that’s what I tried to do.”

 

“Considering your reputation and the strange love of you the President had, I probably could have gotten you a full pardon, too.  You and all your little followers.”

 

“What exactly was your plan, Captain?”  Here the recording of Tony reached to the side into nothingness to pull out the very same chair Steve was sitting on.  Only where Steve Rogers was bent over with his head in his hands trying to think about everything he had never known, Tony Stark was upright, still staring into nothing. 

 

“What exactly was your long-term plan Captain?  If the Skrull invasion had never happened, what was your plan?  Were you really just going to keep beating on people and destroying public and private property until the government gave in? Your collateral damage count was growing with every attack.  Anyone and everyone seem to be an acceptable loss as long as your mission objective was completed.”

 

“You acted like a terrorist.  Enough violence and the government and people will back down, hmm?”

 

The space behind Steve was crowded with Avengers and agents.  Angry muttering as more and more people tried to shove in to see what was going on.  Tony was bringing up old issues and people from both sides were listening and getting agitated.

 

“Now I’m sure that you and your followers are all very upset at my characterization of you.  But I was really curious for a long time; just what _was_ your plan?  I never could figure it out and now I guess I’ll never know.”

 

“My therapists have been very helpful in getting me to let things like that go.”  Again Tony referenced a therapist that none of the hovering Avengers or Steve had ever known he was seeing.  They didn’t know how Tony had hidden something like that from everyone.

 

“Back to why no one ever considered the ‘Civil War’ from my point of view and pointed out that YOU betrayed ME.”  Here the hologram crossed its arms over its chest with a severe look on his face, “exactly how many times did I reach out to you, to try to get you to talk to me?  To negotiate a cease fire?  To negotiate a stop to all the violence?”

 

“Yeah, sure, you wouldn’t have gotten everything you wanted if you stopped trying to beat the government into your way of thinking.  But compromise is not a dirty word, Captain.”

 

“You are not magically the be-all and end-all of moral correctness.  Just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean that they’re malicious or evil or have an _agenda_.  Sure, some of them are all of those things.  But a lot of them just _disagree_ with you and think that _their_ idea is the right thing to do!  A significant portion of the population supported those crap laws because we _frightened_ them!”

 

“You think they’re not still frightened of you?”

 

“Getting my memories back was at the same time both a good thing and a bad thing.”

 

“Getting those memories of the few times that I was able to actually get you to come talk to me so that we could try to talk out some of our differences and then having you inevitably attack me…”

 

“Do you remember, Captain, when we met in the ruin of the Avenger’s Mansion?  I came unarmed because that was the way you wanted it, of course you don’t need to have a weapon to hurt me, do you?”

 

“Do you remember trying to kill me after you had vision deactivate my armor when I came to negotiate?  At least by then I had learned not to come alone and unprotected to our ‘negotiations.’” Here the Tony hologram used one hand to again, do little finger wiggles.

 

“Well, those were bad memories.”

 

“Watching the footage of you being shot and killed…  That was a bad memory, too.”

 

“Having it all somehow be my fault that Red Skull was able to find you and set up your girlfriend to kill you, was also a bad memory.”

 

“After all, just because you had broken the law and needed to go to court for trial, doesn’t mean that when your enemies knew where you were it wasn’t somehow _my fault._ ” 

 

“Of course, if I had contrived to give you a private trial I would have been accused of corruption and fraud.  If the trial had gone for you, it would have been because I somehow threw it, but if you had been convicted, as you should have been, well that would have been because it was a ‘secret’ trial that I had stacked in my favor.”

 

“Your trial _had_ to be public.  And it was going to be long, too.  And that meant that everyone was going to know exactly where you were, every day for a long time.  I’m not surprised you were attacked.”

 

“Personally, what I am surprised about was _when_ you were attacked.  You didn’t even get in the building on day one.”

 

“If it had been _me_ , I would have let the trial go on just long enough to shred your reputation before killing you.  That’s really what I was expecting.”

 

“Oh, sure, we were expecting attacks both by villains and your followers, but the analysis really did suggest that it would be later.”

 

“That was a really bad memory.  Getting that so wrong, and the guilt of thinking you were dead.”

 

“It didn’t help that everyone and their mother seemed to think I had pulled the trigger myself.”

 

“It took my therapists and family _years_ to get me to understand that it wasn’t my fault.  That I only have control of my own actions.”

 

Here the Tony hologram huffed and stood up.  The rolling chair slid a little away from him and out of the picture.

 

“Years’ worth of being blamed every time my company or I was attacked had conditioned me to take all blame for anything that went wrong when I was around. Or even if I wasn’t around.”

 

“How many times did you ask me ‘what did I do now?’ when something went wrong.  Or ‘who did I make mad, this time?’  As if just because I fired someone, or I wouldn’t have a business meeting with someone, or something I invented was groundbreaking and someone wanted to steal my work, then it was justified for people to attack me or my company.  Like that was a reasonable response to getting angry at me.”

 

“Somehow it was my fault every time someone got angry with me and turned into a supervillain.  I’m so special; other people make enemies and all those enemies do is trash talk them on social media or punch them in the nose.” 

 

“But not me.  Oh, no. Mine have to go the supervillain route and no one says, ‘god, no wonder Tony Stark fired that dude.  He’s _Crazy_!’ Instead I get berated for make yet another enemy.  ‘You could have been nicer, Tony,’ as if I even _can_ fire someone nicely.  Or turn down a business proposal _nicely_. Hell, it wasn’t even usually _me_ talking to those people.  A lot of times it really _was_ just my name on the building.  But it was still somehow always my fault.”

 

“I was so used to have the ultimate blame being put on me, people using me as their excuse for why they were hurting people and breaking the law. Is it any wonder that I turned into such a massive control freak?  If everything was my fault, then of course it was my responsibility to fix things and make sure they didn’t happen again.”

 

“You can’t have it both ways.”

 

By this point the back of the lab was standing room only, filled with quiet Avengers and SHIELD agents.  They were watching and listening to Tony Stark rant while Steve Rogers sat there with his head in his hands.

 

“Let me tell you, our stupid little ‘Civil War’ could have _really_ messed me up.  Yeah, I was definitely feeling the betrayal.  Every time you refused to even have a discussion, every time you attacked me during one of our supposedly unarmed meetings, I could feel myself slipping.  I so totally could have gone full on dictator and hunted you down.”  
  


“I mean, you didn’t really think you were hiding from me, did you?”

 

Steve looked up in surprise at the hologram that was back to sitting on the chair.  This time Tony’s recording was leaning back in smugness.

 

“I bet you did.  I bet you did think you were hiding from me.”

 

“Hah, as if.  Who did you think 'work’inonit@Freedomforall'  _was_?’

 

Steve blinked in shock.  He hadn’t realized that Tony had known that he had had a traitor right in his command team during the Civil War.

 

“It was me, you idiot.  I was working both sides.  You might have gone to war with the government and thought that somehow laws would magically get changed as people lost their fear of you rampaging through their neighborhoods; while you _rampaged through their neighborhoods_.  But I’ve always had to live in the real world, not your imaginary rainbows and love will save the day with friendship world.”

 

“Being _right_ doesn’t mean you win. And I didn’t think you were right anyways.  Self-righteous, sure, not right.

 

“I warned you when my forces were getting too close to your latest hideout. I tried to keep you just enough ahead of the investigators that I could minimize conflict and casualties.  I had no confidence in the ability of the SHIELD agents to bring you in without massive destruction and death.  Of course, you trusted an email from what you thought was a perfect stranger, but somehow your friend for years was untrustworthy.”

 

“Yeah, I’m still bitter about it.”

 

Here Tony looked away, “I wasn’t actually planning to get into all of that.  I’ve gotten off track.  Just know that for the entire time until the Skrull invasion happened I was working behind the scenes to turn that crap law into a good one.  And yeah, I still think something like that is needed.”

 

“But anyways… the ‘Civil War’, yeah it could have really messed me up. But I had a little ‘secret weapon.’”

 

The image of Tony leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped together.  The look on his face was one Steve couldn’t identify.

 

“Did you know that years ago I used to help out Reed with his dimensional research a little bit?”

 

Tony paused as if to let that sink in.

 

Steve stood up in alarm, this time the wheeled chair squeaked away from him.

 

“Reed did all the theoretical work, but, well, he’s not the greatest engineer.  He needed a little help building the actual machines.”

 

“We discussed it at the time, Reed will probably remember, but I always thought it was strange that all the worlds Reed recorded and watched seemed to be variations of our own.  Dimensional theory says that every relatively major change, and what that change is isn’t always known, will produce another dimension that runs along parallel to our own. But why weren’t we finding worlds were the Earth never formed, or cat people evolved into the tool using dominant species, or any number of other possibilities.”

 

“I theorized that they were out there, and Reed didn’t disagree.  But he’s really always been more of a dimensional sociologist than anything else, he just wasn’t interested in expanding his research.  He didn’t have enough time.  Reed wants to study the changes that happen to people, mainly people he knows, as their circumstances change.  It’s really just a high-tech way for Reed to try to understand people.”

 

“Me I took it in another direction.  I was wondering if there were universes out there where the _actual universal laws_ were different.  Is there a universe where the gravitational constant is different?  Is there a universe where technology doesn’t work, and everything is magic?”

 

“The answer is, yes, by the way.  It was horrifying.  Even the simplest of my drones would fly through that portal and fall apart on the other side.”

 

“I’m sure you’ve guessed by now why you can’t find me.”

 

At this point Captain America was leaning on the empty metal table in that abandoned lab staring in horror at the picture of the calmly smiling Tony.

 

“It’s called So’chene.  I discovered it years ago.  At first, I fully planned to tell you all about it.  But over time I just didn’t.  It was my little secret, and it wasn’t like it was hurting anyone that I didn’t tell them.”

 

“Frankly, I didn’t trust SHIELD to keep their grasping little claws away from them while they were vulnerable, and I didn’t trust anyone else to truly keep my secret even when ‘I had done something wrong’ and needed to be either punished or ‘watched more carefully.’” 

 

Steve could practically _taste_ the sarcasm in that last sentence and couldn’t help but flush a little in shame and indignation both.  Tony _had_ often needed to be reined in; he often went too far.

 

“The So’chene people had been through a worldwide cataclysm and war when I first visited them, but they still welcomed me.  Time moves _a lot_ faster in their dimension.  It was fascinating watching them build their society back up.  They weren’t quite back in a hunter-gatherer society when I found them, but they were close.”

 

“I helped them, I brought through resources and supplies, helped spread technology again, kickstarted their advancements.  Watching centuries worth of advancement in what for me was just a few years?  Well, let me tell you, I’ve never helped do anything I was more proud of.  I mean, the Avengers and SI and Resilient are okay, but watching So’chene grow…, that was amazing.  They’re well ahead of you now, I’d say a good century, century and a half.  Now _they’re_ the ones teaching me!  It’s great!”

 

“Anyways; So’chene, it means ‘peace’.  They named themselves that because the whole society is absolutely determined to never have another war.  They’re really big on personal responsibility and accepting the consequences of your actions.”

 

“I was never able to spend a lot of time in their dimension until Extremis, because my life was here, and I didn’t want to age years in a day.  But I would go there and interact with the people and relax for weeks to come back to only have had hours pass.  It was very freeing.” 

 

The past Tony leaned back in his chair again, “after Extremis, you might have noticed that my inventing time got shorter and my creations came faster and faster and even more advanced than normal, right?”

 

“Well, it wasn’t because of Extremis turning me into an unfeeling computer, like you always told me.  It was because, with the Extremis healing factor I was able to spend nights on So’chene and no one noticed any extreme aging.”

 

“I suppose that was the first time that I truly contemplated moving there. After all, I was spending months at a time there for every couple of days here.  I wasn’t Tony fucking Stark there; I was just Tony.  Sure, they had ideas about who I am, but it’s not anything like here.  There it’s just because I’ve been living in the same house for generations and some of the families I interact with have known me for those same generations.”

 

“Both the Ushy and Shanoi clans claimed me as one of their own.  In fact, sharing me is what brought them together centuries ago.  Ever since then they’ve made sure their main compounds don’t change much between visits so that I’m always comfortable there no matter how long I’ve been gone.  When I realized what they were doing and why…, that they wanted me to always be comfortable with them…”  Here the Tony hologram smiled with such happiness, that Steve had never seen on his face.  “Their clan grounds are positively antique, by this point.”

 

“Clans specialize in things.  The Shanoi specialize in tech.  A lot of the work I’ve done in the last year has been with their help.  But I’ll tell you about that in a bit.”

 

“I was telling you about how easy it would have been for me to turn into a tin pot despot during your little rebellion.”

 

“The Ushy specialize in mind healing.”

 

Tony let that little bombshell just sit there in front of everyone.

 

“They always were a very artistic clan.  And even from the first clan chief I talked to, they were always very interested in true accountability and owning your actions.  The Ushy were a major player in rebuilding their society. They stepped up after a majority of the population was killed.  It’s no wonder that the whole world has such a yen for self-honesty.  But I did figure out, years ago, that one of the reasons they so emphasized that, not taking responsibility for other’s actions, was me. A significant portion of the clan has also gone in to mind healing over the generations.”

 

“I didn’t figure it out at first, but having the third little brat grow up to be a mind healer and ‘Please Uncle Tony, I’m just nervous, can I please practice on you.’”

 

“I’ve had generations of mind healers focused on me.  Let me tell you figuring out that generations of people had seen my issues and tried to help me was horrifying.”

 

By this time the hologram of Tony had his arms crossed over his chest and was looking to the side a bit.  Despite the topic of conversation and his posture Tony didn’t seem too upset. Steve had meanwhile sat back on the chair again and was intently watching.

 

“But at the same time, generations of people had done everything they could to help me.”

 

Tony’s chair snapped back up-right.  “And no, I did not take advantage of them!  I didn’t ask them to do it and it didn’t hurt them!  Ushy counselors and mind healers are in high demand. They negotiate conflicts and settle disputes.  They are involved in all areas of the government to keep officials honest with both themselves and their people!  It’s just nice to have someone go out of their way to help me even when I’m not paying for their very roof over their head.”

 

“My therapists worked with me for years to get me to a healthier mindset. And yes, that does mean that they kept me on a more even keel during our little conflict.”

 

“Unfortunately, your death and the Skrull invasion was a _big_ set-back.”

 

“Well, not so much the Skrull invasion, although having people accuse me of sabotaging the Earth’s defenses just as the invasion started… Oh, they didn’t think I was _helping_ the Skrull, but they did think I had deliberately sabotaged the defense satellites.”

 

“Personally I didn’t really understand the distinction, but I was assured there was one.  Oh, and I killed you knowing the Skrull were going to be coming too.”  Here Tony shrugged, “I don’t know.  Out of spite, or something.”

 

“Somehow the idea that even _my_ tech was not perfect and that my firewalls could be overcome by the advanced spacefaring race that was centuries ahead of us and been conquering worlds for all that time, was something no one else had ever thought of.  No, I must have done it on purpose.  Again, it was my fault that someone attacked me and thus the world.”

 

“Losing my memories was bad.”

 

“Do you remember, Steve, that I seemed to get better in fits and starts? That I would be confused and then a couple of days later it was like I had never had a problem?”

 

“That was the Ushy and the Shanoi working together.  I had an entire team of people working together to untangle the mess the Skrull and Osborn and I had made of Extremis and my memories. It took them years.  I would go and stay with them for months at a time every time I could get away from all the watching.  Because ‘god knows, I seemed to have been the enemy of the world at that point.”

 

“You were dead and that seemed to wash away all of your sins in the eyes of the people.  And then the Skrulls invaded and I hadn’t been able to stop them.  So obviously I must have been secretly helping them.”

 

“Isn’t it interesting how powerful people seem to think I am.  If I’m not able to stop something, then it must be because I secretly want it to happen and I didn’t try to stop it.” 

 

“People seem to think I can literally do _anything_.  I’m like a vengeful god to them.”

 

“A law was written and passed.  I didn’t disagree with it and immediately start punching people.  In fact, I objected to you doing just that, so _somehow_ people started thinking that I actually _wrote_ that law because I had just been looking for a way to _betray_ you.”

 

“…Sorry.”  Again the hologram of Tony was standing and obviously agitated.  “I’m rambling.  And I don’t have much time left, so moving on…”

 

“I got myself put back together and most of my memories were back. And no, I didn’t tell you or anyone else they were back.  I didn’t want to have that argument again, and frankly, I was already seriously contemplating moving to So’chene.  It had never been anything more than an idle thought before, but that was when I really started thinking about it.”

 

“None of my relationships have really survived well with all the drama here on Earth.  I’m going to miss Rhodey, but… as of now I know he’s okay, and that’s just going to have to be enough.”

 

The recording of Tony stopped here with a serious look on his face. Several seconds passed before it took a deep breath and continued: “No doubt you’re wondering why I said I was going to miss Rhodey, but that was all.”

 

“I know I’ve been forcing you to listen to all of this and you probably don’t care that much.  A lot of it was old news and I’m sure your interpretation is vastly different. You’re never really going to have a chance to respond and that’s not fair.  But, this was literally the last chance I had say all of this and get it off my chest, so I took it.”

 

“The reason I’m going to miss Rhodey and that’s it, is because he seems to be the only one who doesn’t secretly think I’m a monster.”

 

“It all goes back to that first incursion, when we barely knew what was going on.”

 

“Do you remember now, Steve, how T’Challa and Stephen, Hank, Black Bolt, Reed, Namor and I all decided that you should use the Infinity Gauntlet to protect us.  That we all trusted you to not be distracted and be overcome by the power.”

 

“Well what we really should have been looking for was someone with a little more knowledge about what exactly needed to be done, and a little less bull-headed stubbornness.”

 

“We told you that the Gems were alive to a certain extent.  That the Gems would take your orders and make them reality.  That you needed to tell them what to do, but to let them figure out how.” 

 

“But that’s not what you did, is it Steve?”

 

“You stood there, and you told those Gems to push.  You told those Gems to push that other universe’s Earth away from our Earth like you were standing there on immovable ground like a great pillar.”

 

“Only that _wasn’t_ what you are.  You are not some sort of immovable pillar and the Earth is not ‘in fact’ unmovable ground. You told those Gems exactly what to do and exactly how to do it without any leeway, without any give to your orders. You forced your idea of how to keep the two Earths apart until 5 of the Gems shattered.”

 

“You were so rigid in your orders that you shoved a square peg through a round hole.  And then you were surprised that you didn’t have a square peg anymore.”

 

“That was the first incursion.  But Reed had been watching the multiverse and he had seen several universes destroyed already.  We _all_ knew that more incursions were coming, and you had just destroyed the most powerful, most sure way we had to protect ourselves.”

 

Here Tony held up one hand.

 

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose, Steve.  I would never say that you did.  But you have to take responsibility for your actions.  Your rigid, unbending thinking destroyed the one sure way we had to keep our planet from colliding with another without casualties.”

 

“We never should have asked you to do it.  It should have been me, or Reed or T’Challa.  True not being overcome by the power of the Gauntlet was important, but even more important was knowing what you were doing.”

 

“That was our mistake.  And in many ways, we’ve all payed for it.”

 

“After the Gauntlet was destroyed and we no longer had a way to protect the 7 billion people on this planet and the trillions out in our universe, what was your response?”

 

“You pretty accurately predicted our response, but what was yours, Steve?”

 

Here Tony’s hologram folded his arms behind his back in an almost parade position.

 

“This is the important part, Steve.  This is why I need to explain to you what I did and why you will never see me again.  So, pay attention.”

 

“The Gauntlet was gone and talk moved to weapons.  Horrible, world-destroying weapons.  The first time the rest of them asked me if I thought I could design an anti-matter bomb capable of destroying a planet I almost vomited. The idea of destroying a planet was _unthinkable_.”

 

“Only I _had_ to think of it.  I had to seriously contemplate the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to figure out a way to keep the next Earth from hitting us. I had to weigh the possibility that ‘I’ _personally_ could be responsible for billions of deaths to keep two universes from colliding and wiping out them both.”

 

“It wasn’t just the Earth in danger.  It was everyone in the Milky Way, the Andromeda, the Pegasus and all the other galaxies that only have numbers they’re so far away.”

 

“Reed had already watched as two Earths had collided.  It wasn’t just the planets that were destroyed it was two entire universes.”

 

“Hell, I couldn’t even justify not destroying my _own_ planet if that’s what it came down to.  It was billions of people versus uncounted trillions.”

 

“And every single one of us in that room realized that.”

 

“Except for you, it seems.”

 

“We told you that we were just exploring all the options.  That we had to have a back-up now that the Gauntlet was gone.  It’s not like any of us were looking forward to destroying a planet full of people. That maybe brainstorming, thinking about everything, someone would come up with the way to save us all or stop this from happening.”

 

“What was it you said, Steve?  Do you remember?  I certainly do.”

 

“I believe it was something like: You’re going to build a machine or some kind of weapon without thinking if you should just because you might need it. And then the debate will turn from should we build this to under what doomsday scenarios is it acceptable to use the thing? And then slowly, one by one, you’ll convince yourselves we’re doing this for the right reasons.  There’s no other choice.  It’s the lesser of two evil.”

 

“You looked right at me and called me a monster to my face.  As if I would destroy a planet, kill billions of people, for _convenience_.  Because that would be _easier_ than finding another way.  That I would accept the lesser of two evils and just _stop!_ ”

 

“I wonder when you started to believe I was a monster, Steve?”

 

“Have you always believed that?  I know you have a habit of demonizing people who disagree with you. I know you almost always subscribe people disagreeing with you to malicious intentions and selfishness, as if only you know the right way.  Is that it, Steve?  Did I just disagree with you too often?”

 

“Well, you might have predicted what our panicked response to knowing that our entire universe could be destroyed at any time was, but we predicted you too.”

 

“The others knew you wouldn’t ever agree with our contemplating such a thing. I mean it’s not like you had any sort of constructive suggestion other than ‘we’ll find a way’, as if hope and righteousness is enough to stop a planet from hitting you.”

 

“Why is it, Steve, that you only seemed to blame _me_ for a group of 7 people deciding to erase your memories? I’m not even the one who did it.”

 

“Is this another instance where I’m supposed to be god?”

 

“Seven people of which I was one decided to remove you from being in our way so that we could get on with trying to save the universe instead of fighting you and _also_ still trying to save the universe, but somehow it’s all my fault.  How does that work, again?” 

 

“Oh, sure, I’m definitely 1 of the 7 and I _did_ help.  Or at least I didn’t object to, or try to stop, someone from violating your person and your memory. I’m not trying to deny that; it was a shitty thing to do to a human being.”

 

“Let’s game this out, Steve: hypothetical situation.”  Here Tony clasped his hands together under his chin and his voice went up in a mocking falsetto, “Oh, no Stephen.  We can’t do that to darling Steve.  Why he is so right, this will destroy us.  Destroying planets for fun and profit is wrong.  I’m sure if we just frown at those colliding planets in severe disapproval, they wouldn’t dare try to hit us… Oh, what’s that? You’re going to erase both our memories? Oh, I didn’t think of that!”

 

His hands went down as the hologram’s expression went back to normal.

 

“There were only two outcomes to your willingness to believe that we were all just waiting with baited-breath for the opportunity to kill as many people as possible and get away with it.  The first is what happened; you walked out with no memories. And the second is both of us being wiped.  Don’t for a second think that they would have hesitated to wipe me right along with you if I had sided with you.”

 

“That’s what happens when two people have such ‘legendary teamwork,’ Tony shook his head a little with a little scornful quirk of his lips. “Legendary teamwork, my perfectly formed ass.  We might have worked well on the field.  But obviously there wasn’t a lot of trust between us after all this time.  I guess the drama just eroded it all away, if it was ever there in the first place.”

 

“When was the last time that you actually trusted me, Steve?”

 

“We violated your person and I am sorry for that.  It was wrong.  Maybe if I had to do it all over, I would just incarcerate you instead.  I don’t know.  But having you out of my way…, I’m not sorry for removing an obstacle, I just wish we had found a better way to do it.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry.  Do you not like being called an obstacle, Captain?”

 

“Well I don’t like being called a monster.”

 

“If you had actually had the trust in me that you always professed you did the ‘Civil War’ would never have happened.  I was one of the political experts on the team, you were always to ‘good’ to get involved with politics.  You didn’t have a damn clue what you were doing, and you didn’t respect me at all. If you had, you would have actually trusted me to respect your position and try to work to get the things you wanted, because that’s what friends and teammates _do._ ”

 

“That stupid rebellion of yours already proved that you didn’t trust me or my intentions when it came to one of my areas of expertise.  And these incursions were _a lot_ more important _and_ more dangerous.  I didn’t have _time_ to have to fight you and work to save the universe.  So having you _out of the way_ was a _relief!_   Especially after you expressed just what you really thought of me!”

 

“So I set you up to create the biggest and best Avengers team ever in the hope that if we failed you might have a chance.”

 

“And I also gave you something that was so time consuming that you wouldn’t notice how stressed and busy I was.”

 

“Yes, I did it on purpose.”

 

“Besides, I might have spent thousands of hours trying to solve the incursions, but I had also decided that when everything was over that I was done. I don’t need this kind of stress in my life.  And god knows, with friends like you…”

 

The Tony in the hologram settle back on his chair again, “You’ll be vindicated to know that one of the first solutions we came up with really was a giant bomb.  Well, I say giant because it’s capable of destroying a planet, but in reality, it was rather small.”

 

“You’ll be even more self-righteous in your condemnation of me when I tell you we actually used it twice.”

 

Tony let those horrifying words sit there for a moment.  “We got incredibly lucky, actually.  The first 2 incursions after we wiped your memories were of 2 entirely unpopulated planets.  The first one had obviously had some sort of catastrophe and was cracked almost entirely in two.  The atmosphere had been lost at some point and there was no one left alive.  And, yes, we looked.  We even tried to figure out what had happened before it just got too close and we used my anti-matter bomb on it.  At that point it was really just luck that we even had the bomb, I’d only finished building it a few weeks before.”

 

“By the second incursion we actually had some other things to try other than just blowing up the planet that was going to smash into ours.  We tried a phase cloak, to phase everything out of the dimension just enough so that the planets would miss each other. I got the idea from Kitty Pryde.  We also tried a straight up shield, and Reed and I worked to harden the walls of our dimension just enough so that the other Earth couldn’t get through and a few other things.  None of them worked.  As you can imagine the power requirement for anything that was going to protect us would be immense.  I actually calculated it out as we would need more than the power that would be produced by our sun over its entire lifetime.”

 

“It was starting to look like we were going to have to use that damn bomb again, and then we realized that this Earth had no one living on it. There had been a nuclear war or something similar and everyone was dead.  Yes, we looked.  We had to use radiation suites as whatever they had used in their weapons was worse than the gamma bombs the US has.”

 

“It wasn’t that much of a hardship to have to destroy that planet as well.  Well I say it wasn’t much of a hardship, but even if no one was living on it anymore watching a planet be destroyed and knowing that you were the one who did that, is still a terrible thing to see.  Of course, you probably think I was standing there with popcorn and a smile on my face with the thrill of getting to do something so big.”

 

“I have to say, it’s a very good thing that I had So’chene to retreat to. If I had had to try to get past that while at the same time keep up the façade that we were actually friends at that point…”  Tony heaved a big sigh, “The Shanoi really came through for us.  Well, I say the Shanoi, but I really mean all of So’chene came through for me and Earth.  Entire government funded facilities were started with the sole purpose of solving the problems _this_ planet was having.”

 

“Their dimensional science department had already determined that nothing was threatening them.  That no alternate versions of their planet were getting ready to smash into them or any of the other planets in their dimension.  None of the dimensions near their own were in danger.  But, as they said, now that we know this can happen the responsible thing is to find a solution for it, just in case.”

 

“What a load of bull.”  Here Tony visibly relaxed.  Steve had noticed that he always did when talking about his new home.  “They did it for me.  Yeah, it would be the responsible thing to learn how to protect their planet from a possible danger.  But all their research was doubly hard for them, because they were using the laws of physics for _this_ universe.  Not their own.  Everything had to be theoretical, for them.  Any solutions they came up with would never work in their dimension, not without modification.”

 

“I told you that I was looking into the possibility that universal laws were not necessarily the same across dimensions, didn’t I?  I mean that’s why I originally started traveling between here on Earth and So’chene.  The differences are subtle enough that we can use ideas from them and vice versus, but not quite 100% of the time.  It was _fascinating_ figuring everything out.  And having a place I could go with such a severe temporal difference was great!  There’s nothing like taking a two-week vacation and not having anyone know I was gone.”

 

“But that’s all science,” here Tony waved his hand again, “you’re not interested in that.  The part that is really important to you was that in the months of work here on Earth we had over a decade to think of new ideas.”

 

“Yeah, I’m a lot older now.  You’d never know it though, huh?  Getting Extremis up and working again, getting my healing factor to kick in full again… I mean I was never going to tell you about that, I don’t need to listen to how _your_ enhancements were such a great thing, but _mine_ changed me into a psychopath.  At least you had a choice; you were sickly, but you weren’t actually dying.  Me, I’d have been dead in 5 minutes if Extremis hadn’t been compatible to my body. I should have realized back then, when you told me that I shouldn’t have done it, that Extremis was a mistake…”

 

“Anyways, we had almost 15 years of fairly steady research going on how to stop this dimension from imploding.  We had a lot of possibilities and were working on several short-term solutions, but the real, _permanent_ solution was still eluding us, and that’s when one of the project interns had an idea.  It was an intern; can you believe it?  Barely 20 years old, first major project she had ever worked on and she asked me, how much energy is released when my anti-matter bomb destroyed those uninhabited planets?”

 

“It all started from that question.”

 

“So, in conclusion, Steve.  You’ve been moved.  You’re no longer in your original universe.  But I can only see that being a problem for maaayyybee 10 people on your whole planet.  And in the grand scheme of things, I’m not going to let that bother me when we’ve saved, oh, probably 9 or 12 universes full of people.”

 

“I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit, let me go back.”

 

“So, I was working both here on Earth and on So’chene to try to figure out a way to stop another Earth from smacking into this one and destroying both universes.  We had just had to destroy our second uninhabited planet, when just days later another Incursion started.  By this time, my genius little intern had asked her question, but even with the time difference we hadn’t been able to come up with a solution yet.”

 

“Reed and I watched as that planet was consumed by Galacticus.”

 

“I guess that world either didn’t have Avengers, or the Galacticus of that universe beat them.  I don’t know. The others watched with us.”

 

“You seem to think that we’re all monsters, so you probably assume that we were happy, watching that happen.  Well you’re wrong.  We couldn’t help ourselves, we actually tried to stop it, we tried to save them.  I almost lost Reed on that other Earth.  He had taken a portal machine with us and was trying to save people and shove them through a portal.  We didn’t have time to drive off Galacticus, I mean we really weren’t expecting him, so we tried to evacuate everyone we could reach and even then, we probably only saved maybe a thousand.”

 

“Watching a fully inhabited Earth, just like your own being eaten… I still have nightmares and it’s been decades.”

 

“It was shortly after this that you got your memories back, Steve. We were all shell-shocked and suddenly everyone had to scatter and go on the run.”

 

“By that time, I was spending almost all of my time on So’chene, so I have to admit to not really worrying that you were going to find me.”

 

“I’ve been listening to you talk to your Avengers, Steve, ever since you got your memories back.  You planned my capture in the very building I built.”

 

“I’ve always known you weren’t quite the strategic planner that your PR made you out to be.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, there is no one better when it comes to immediate on-the-fly tactics than you.  But the long-term strategic planning isn’t your strong suit.  As evidenced by your apparent lack of plan during what the press called our ‘Civil War’.”

 

“You planned my capture using tech I gave you.  You talked to each other over communication networks I designed. You talked about me in the buildings I built.”  The recording paused with a slightly puzzled look, “I really don’t understand how you ever thought you were going to catch me that way.”

 

“I also don’t understand why it is that I was, _again_ , the one to blame for everything.  You weren’t spending nearly as much time trying to find Stephen and Reed and all the others.  I mean, sure I didn’t argue, but it _was_ actually Stephen that wiped your memories.”  Here Tony’s voice got very condescending, “you _do_ realize that, don’t you?”

 

“You always seem so hyper focused on me; I don’t get it.  When I thought we were friends it wasn’t so bad, but we obviously haven’t been friends in a long time, and now it’s just strange. I mean, I _am_ good at my job, that’s true.  And I can build some truly _amazing_ stuff, that’s also true.  But you really do seem to think I can do _anything_.  It’s flattering, to a certain extent, but it also means that everything is my fault in your head, because if I can do _anything_ then obviously everything that happens is my fault because I let it happen. And that’s where it gets not quite so flattering.”

 

“But congratulations,” the Tony hologram waved its arms around, “you found the last of my labs, finally.  So here you are for your explanation about what I did.”

 

“I had told you that all the possible solutions we had found required more power than our sun would put out in its entire lifetime.  That is _a lot_ of power.  More power than any power source I have ever heard of.  Although I do have ideas now about how I could go about…, never mind forget that.”  The Tony of the past waved away the thought, “but my genius little intern, I so totally kept her, had asked a good question.”

 

“Just how much power was given off by the anti-matter explosion of an entire planet?  And the answer was: more than enough.  Now, I didn’t have any desire to blow up a perfectly good planet along with 7 billion people, so I looked around in the general dimensional vicinity of our Earth. And I found it, another world with no population, I think they too had destroyed themselves with a world war, but no matter.  It was exactly what I needed.  An entire planet Earth with not a single human living on it; perfect.”

 

“Now blowing up _that_ planet wasn’t going to save anyone.  And it certainly wasn’t going to be a permanent solution to our problem, but that’s where my phase-shifting and dimensional shielding tech came into it. It was the timing that was so hard. I had to wait until there was another incursion for it to work as that’s when multiple universes were overlapping, and power was leaching between them.  Fortunately, I had plenty of time to plan everything down to the last second.”

 

“I was actually a little worried that you would find me once I had to physically come back to Earth for the last calibration and planning.  I just knew that you wouldn’t listen to me, after all, I _am_ the monstrous villain of the whole piece who gleefully planned to murder billions.  What was your plan if you ever caught me, oh yes, if I remember correctly you were going to ‘beat me bloody.’  The likelihood of you listening to me try to tell you I had solved the problem was pretty small.  If I tried to explain that we needed to blow up just _one_ more Earth, well even with my healing I’m not sure I would have survived that.”

 

“But, I did it.  I used that Earth as the matter half of a controlled anti-matter explosion.  I collected all the energy released with its destruction and I phase shifted _our_ Earth into its place.  I might have lost some of the higher satellites, but I was able to keep the space stations. It’s a different moon, so any equipment on our moon might not be on the new one, as they seemed to have destroyed themselves some time ago.  But we didn’t lose any people as the moon base was deserted at the time.  And let me tell you, that was a pain to arrange without anyone noticing.”

 

“So that saved us from collision, but it wasn’t really a long-term solution, was it?  I mean, we can’t just rely on the idea that there are enough uninhabited Earths out there that we can skip into a new universe every time we come close to a collision.  And the destruction of an entire planet’s worth of matter gave off _more_ than enough energy to use the dimensional shield tech too. At that point everything just fell into place perfectly.  I used the last of the power from the matter/anti-matter explosion to protect not just the dimension I had shifted the Earth into, but also the dimension of the Earth that almost hit ours.  Those two dimensions, and your home dimension were at the center of everything.  For that one moment they were all connected. And I used that to focus the dimensional shield.”

 

“Our old dimension doesn’t need it, but it has it.  I mean, nothing’s going to be banging into anything, because there isn’t an Earth there to hit.”  Here Tony waved his hand, “that doesn’t matter.  The shielding tech is what’s important here.  I had almost half of the power from the explosion left. And it’s not like I can just store it someplace.  That would be like trying to store the entire output of the sun in a battery, not possible. So I used it.”

 

“The dimensional barriers on the 3 central universes in our little spectacle are, for right now, solid.  As far as I can tell, nothing is getting through them.  And that includes more incursions of other Earth’s.  and radiating outwards from those 3 dimensions the dimensions closest to them have more impenetrable walls as well.  The effect lessens the farther away from the 3 central dimension you get, but it should protect _at least_ another 6  to 12 dimensions fully and should drastically reduce the ease of a dimensional intrusion, including other Earths for even more.”

 

“So, there you go!  You’re all saved!”  The Tony hologram threw it’s hands up in the air, “Yay.”

 

“Now for what that means.  You are in another universe.  The whole planet.  Everyone. In this universe Earth was rendered uninhabited several years ago.  I was going on the assumption that they did it to themselves, but I just don’t know, and I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it.  Everyone on another planet that you know will no longer know you. I don’t know if the galactic map and players are all the same.  I was a little too busy to care, so you’re going to have to figure that out.”

 

“As for Reed and his dimensional portals and tech.  I am sure that if he worked at it hard enough, he could probably figure out a way to burrow his way through the shield I set up. That would be a bad idea, don’t let him do it.  Once the shield is breached it will not be nearly as effective.  As it is, it’s at its strongest right now and will slowly lose cohesion over the next century or so.  I estimate full strength for at least the next 25 years.”

 

“I don’t know if this shield will prevent dimensional intrusions of the mystical sort, you’ll have to ask Strange.  Personally, I think it will take more power for them to break through, but those aren’t really different dimension as explained by Reed’s models so much as different layers of the dimension we are already in.  I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Reed and Strange. And you’ll have to figure out if we dragged along the old mystic dimensions when the Earth was shifted or if they’re the ones of the Earth you’re replacing.”

 

“As for me, you’ve no doubt figure out that I didn’t come with you. I was in the So’chene dimension right after the last command was entered and the last button pushed.  After all, I didn’t want to get trapped there once the dimensional walls hardened.  So, no, I won’t be coming to visit, and you won’t be able to leave your dimension to find me.  That truly _is_ the last of my labs for you to find, although I’m sure you won’t believe me and will still look for more.  Go ahead, maybe you’ll find something interesting that I’ve forgotten about.”

 

“Once this message is played it will unlock everything that I’m leaving to people.  There’s not nearly as much as you probably expect though, because, you know, I’m not actually dying, I’m just moving, and I took everything I could think of with me. I left some data packets for a few people.  They’ll have received them when this message started.  And any physical resources I had left after your manhunt I leave to Rhodey.”

 

“Rhodey-bear, I know I didn’t really say much about you in this message, but you have a personal one coming just to you.  You get everything platypus, if you want to share it with people that’s up to you, it’s yours now.”

 

“That’s pretty much it now, Steve.  I’ve said it all I believe.  No doubt you have a lot of excuses and reasons that you want to share with me. But this time it’s me that’s not listening.  You don’t have to keep me from going full on villain like you’ve always thought I would. Instead I’m going to join my family and my clans on a world that’s named for ‘peace.’”

 

“Good luck, Steve.  I hope you find your own peace.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The original, much longer story, included JARVIS from the MCU, as well as using the MCU character of Tony Stark more than the comics Tony Stark. I suppose that because I only published this one scene, I could take out the MCU tag, it's not really relevant. But I'm going to leave it.


End file.
